Michael Eric Dyson Quotes

#1. I think that what Donald Trump is doing, the way in which racism, xenophobia, anti-Muslim belief and the like are being expressed through the campaign of Donald Trump, calls for, I think, a very vigorous and aggressive response to what he's saying.

Michael Eric Dyson

#2. I think that he [Michael Jackson] did derive an ultimate sense of joy and satisfaction in what others enjoyed from him that was denied to himself. There's no question that the transcendent art that he created was a means, an instrument, a vehicle for others to experience what he didn't.

Michael Eric Dyson

#3. Tony Morrison said, 'Can't I love what I criticize, criticize what I love.'

Michael Eric Dyson

#4. His dreams were the natural reflex of hope and redeemed curiosity.

Michael Eric Dyson

#5. In the minds of many Americans, if you are a radical Democrat or a Socialist, you are automatically a Communist. And if you are a Communist, then therefore you are an anti-American person and a person who is not a patriot. But nothing is further from the truth.

Michael Eric Dyson

#6. Obviously, Jay-Z is one of the greatest entertainers of the world today. Not only is he a remarkable rhetorical genius, he's also a man of deep sympathy and empathy for those who are lost and vulnerable, but especially under-educated youth of all cultures and stripes.

Michael Eric Dyson

#7. All Americans deserve an equal crack at what it means to be a - having - having resources in your own home and in your state and in your country.

Michael Eric Dyson

#8. Speaking out against rap music is useless, and it's futile. The reality is there's criticism for everything, but Jay-Z is one of the most remarkable artists of our time of any genre, and as a hip-hop artist he carries the weight of that art form with such splendor and grace and genius.

Michael Eric Dyson

#9. There's a great book about John Kennedy and his relationship to civil rights called 'The Bystander.' The title alone suggests that he did as little as possible, any minimal critical effort, to really facilitate civil rights in the White House.

Michael Eric Dyson

#10. Barack Obama has come closer than any figure in recent history to obeying a direct call of the people to the brutal and bloody fields of political mission.

Michael Eric Dyson

#11. The parallels between Elvis and Michael Jackson as incredible artists is evident. But I think that where Michael Jackson even transcends Elvis Presley.

Michael Eric Dyson

#12. Nd the same rapper who revels in a woman's finely proportioned behind may also speak against racism and on behalf of the poor, even as he encourages them not to look at hip-hop as their salvation.

Michael Eric Dyson

#13. It is bad enough to be white and poor; it is worse still to be black, or brown, and female, and young, and poor. Simply said, race makes class hurt more.

Michael Eric Dyson

#14. All of us should be much more humble and contrite when we point the finger at somebody else, because four more fingers are pointing back at us.

Michael Eric Dyson

#15. In the barbershop, there's democracy. You're a professor; you're an engineer; you're a garbage man, have at it. You got something to say, get down with it.

Michael Eric Dyson

#16. I don't believe in that kind of American John Wayne individualism where people pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Someone changed your diapers. And if that's the case, you ain't self-made.

Michael Eric Dyson

#17. I'm nervous about the prospects of an America that refuses to abide by its best conscience and its best lights and its best angels.

Michael Eric Dyson

#18. I'm not trying to say stop Donald Trump from being elected as his party's nominee. I'm saying that we have a responsibility to raise our voices, to say what he does as an American citizen is pretty destructive to the practice of goodhearted and conscientious politics.

Michael Eric Dyson

#19. America certainly has made extraordinary progress. The collective unconscious of the nation has certainly shifted as a result of the civil rights movement and the developments in the '70s and '80s. We have witnessed a great expansion of the black middle class.

Michael Eric Dyson

#20. We can't exempt ourselves from the same moral calculus that we are willing to apply to others.

Michael Eric Dyson

#21. I think that Michael Jackson, just as an entertainer, as a figure who embodies the contradictions of black identity and the possibilities of R&B music in the '70s and '80s, will continue to be one of the most recognized and formidable human beings that we've ever produced in our tradition.

Michael Eric Dyson

#22. Record labels collude with some of the radio stations, and the radio stations have their play lists, dependent upon what they call the, quote, 'hits.' What's commercially viable gets recycled, endlessly repeated, and as a result of that, the progressive music can't break in.

Michael Eric Dyson

#23. There are huge divorces and divides and chasms in black America between the have-gots and the have-nots, between the monied and the poor, between the educated and the non-educated. And there are huge and growing chasms daily. And I want to say that it's not simply about generation. It's about genre.

Michael Eric Dyson

#24. Donald Trump amplifies the worst instincts. And his nationalism is really a white racist supremacist nationalism.

Michael Eric Dyson

#25. I think the O.J. Simpson case conjured all the paranoia, the racial anxiety, but also the racial fatigue that America has endured over the last half century.

Michael Eric Dyson

#26. I want young people to look at me and go, 'Damn, I want to be like that brother. He sharp, he be on point. He represent black people.' I want to make the life of the mind sexy.

Michael Eric Dyson

#27. I don't think you can bury words. I think the more you try to dismiss them, the more power you give to them, the more circulation they have.

Michael Eric Dyson

#28. Hip-hop is about the brilliance of pavement poetry.

Michael Eric Dyson

#29. There is no conscious choice of heterosexual identity any more than there is a homosexual one. The last person in the world who wants to be homosexual, for the most part, are homosexuals.

Michael Eric Dyson

#30. Black people watch more television than anybody else, which makes it legitimate to talk about television. Its anesthetizing effect has been quite real. But that concern isn't new.

Michael Eric Dyson

#31. If white and black and red and brown can come together to focus our energies on overcoming the racial malaise that persists, then this will have been a great moment.

Michael Eric Dyson

#32. Race was thick in the O.J. Simpson case from the very beginning, but it wasn't evident. And I think the O.J. Simpson case revealed that there is subtle race, and there is sophisticated race, and there's evident and observable race.

Michael Eric Dyson

#33. I believe in a God of a second chance and a God of love and mercy, because I need so much more of it myself.

Michael Eric Dyson

#34. My ambition didn't grow out of nowhere. It was planted in me by a community that nurtured me.

Michael Eric Dyson

#35. The language of faith is crucial because it affords human beings the privilege of intimacy with the ultimate.

Michael Eric Dyson

#36. My church is the world! I want to bring the gospel to as broad and as interesting an audience as possible.

Michael Eric Dyson

#37. There are many Americans who regardless of the intelligence or the profound political persuasion of a figure will never vote for a black man. Not all of them are racists; some are skeptical, and some are suspicious.

Michael Eric Dyson

#38. I knew Snoop Dog didn't start misogyny. I knew that Tupac Shakur didn't start sexism, and God knows that Dr. Dre didn't start patriarchy. Yet they extended it in vicious form within their own communities. They made vulnerable people more vulnerable.

Michael Eric Dyson

#39. I think that not only do saints make poor role models, they are incapable in one sense of identifying radically with those of us who are mere mortals. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s mortality says to us that here's a figure who got up every day of his life facing tremendous odds and yet overcame them.

Michael Eric Dyson

#40. In our high-tech, high-skilled economy where low-skilled work is being scaled back, phased out, exported, or severely under-compensated, all the right behavior in the world won't create better jobs with more pay.

Michael Eric Dyson

#41. I'm a 'tweener,' man! I couldn't march with Dr. King and them. And I'm too old to be a hip-hopper. But I've been granted honorary status in each generation ... I see my tongue as a bridge over which ideas can travel back and forth.

Michael Eric Dyson

#42. I went to a segregated school; I was born a Negro, not a black man.

Michael Eric Dyson

#43. No other group has internalized its self-hatred as much as blacks have. It would be difficult to find other groups who behave similarly in that their most esteemed members berate its poorest members.

Michael Eric Dyson

#44. Hip hop music is important precisely because it sheds light on contemporary politics, history, and race. At its best, hip hop gives voice to marginal black youth we are not used to hearing from on such topics.

Michael Eric Dyson

#45. Comedy is to force us to observe ourselves in ways that are humorous and yet, at the end of the day, that cause us enough discomfort with the status quo to make a change.

Michael Eric Dyson

#46. Hip-hop has globalized a conception of blackness that has had a political impact, whether or not it had a political intent.

Michael Eric Dyson

#47. He was not hip-hop's most gifted emcee. Still, Shakur may be the most influential and compelling rapper of them all, he was more than the sum of his artistic parts.

Michael Eric Dyson

#48. Body piercing and baggy clothes express identity among black youth, and not just beginning with hip-hop culture. Moreover, young black entrepreneurs like Sean 'P. Diddy' Combs and Russell Simmons have made millions from their clothing lines.

Michael Eric Dyson

#49. The methodologies of examining hip hop are borrowed from sociology, politics, religion, economics, urban studies, journalism, communications theory, American studies, transatlantic studies, black studies, history, musicology, comparative literature, English, linguistics, and other disciplines.

Michael Eric Dyson

#50. If Barack Obama now, or some black person in the future, should become president, neither Jesse Jackson nor Al Sharpton would be out of a job. A black president can't end black misery; a black president can't be a civil rights leader or primarily a crusader for racial justice.

Michael Eric Dyson

#51. I don't worship the Bible, I worship the God who gave the Bible.

Michael Eric Dyson

#52. Bill Cosby is a famous black guy who has a bully pulpit the size of the world; it's global. He puts his colossal foot on the vulnerable necks of poor people, and as a result of that, we don't have a balanced conversation.

Michael Eric Dyson

#53. There's a dark underside to philanthropy. People who give a bunch of money are deferred to, even when they are wrong. The emperor cannot be shown to have no clothes.

Michael Eric Dyson

#54. Elvis [Presley] had a stepstool, if you will, to success because he came from the dominant culture. They identified with him. Michael Jackson had to come further and go deeper into the pit of possibility of American democracy and of cultural expression.

Michael Eric Dyson

#55. I guess I'm a Luddite.

Michael Eric Dyson

#56. To whom much has been given, much is required.

Michael Eric Dyson

#57. By denying its musical and artistic merit, hip hop's critics get to have it both ways: they can deny the legitimate artistic standing of rap while seizing on its pervasive influence as an art form to prove what a terrible effect it has on youth.

Michael Eric Dyson

#58. Hip hop scholarship must strive to reflect the form it interrogates, offering the same features as the best hip hop: seductive rhythms, throbbing beats, intelligent lyrics, soulful samples, and a sense of joy that is never exhausted in one sitting.

Michael Eric Dyson

#59. White-on-white crime is a devastation in America like so-called black-on-black crime. It's not black or white-on-white crime. It's proximity murder.

Michael Eric Dyson

#60. Ralph Ellison is a classic work of erudition, grace, and elegance. Rampersad offers us an Ellison whose gifts and warts orbit the same universe of creative genius. Like Ellison's work, Rampersad's text wrestles eloquently with difficult truths about race, politics, and American life.

Michael Eric Dyson

#61. My empathy for poor people comes from having been one of them for so long, from knowing that their humanity is more complex and that the truths of their suffering have to be told honestly.

Michael Eric Dyson

#62. When you look at a guy like a Jay-Z or look at a guy like a Nas, you don't necessarily qualify them as conscious rap purely, although they are extremely conscious of the social inequities that prevail.

Michael Eric Dyson

#63. I used to tell people when I preached at a church, 'If you want a great sermon, be a great audience.'

Michael Eric Dyson

#64. The writer's gift can make us see ourselves and our morals differently than our reality suggests.

Michael Eric Dyson

#65. Jeremiah Wright is one of the greatest prophetic preachers that black America has produced. What I find striking is that many white brothers and sisters miss the fact that there would be no black church if the white church wasn't political and racist in refusing to worship with us.

Michael Eric Dyson

#66. Justice is what love sounds like when it speaks in public.

Michael Eric Dyson

#67. What he [Michael Jackson] did was he allowed us, through his voice and his instrument, to see a glimpse of the heaven that he himself was denied. That sacrifice was the ultimate source of redemption that he gave to us.

Michael Eric Dyson

#68. I grew up in Detroit. I was a teen father. I lived on welfare for three years. I have a brother serving life in prison, though I believe he's innocent.

Michael Eric Dyson

#69. We should not be post-racial: seeking to get beyond the uplifting meanings and edifying registers of blackness. Rather, we should be post-racist: moving beyond cultural fascism and vicious narratives of racial privilege and superiority that tear at the fabric of e pluribus unum.

Michael Eric Dyson

#70. Michael Jackson carried urban America and eventually American society on his vocal cords for a good 25 to 30 years before even hip-hop became the vox populi of America, and then as an adult he shattered racial barriers.

Michael Eric Dyson

#71. I have no interest in romanticizing poor black people, having been one of them myself in our beloved hometown of Detroit.

Michael Eric Dyson

#72. Michael Joseph Jackson's genius was the ability to be the raw article himself - the real article himself. He is part of the African American people who were marginalized.

Michael Eric Dyson

#73. Martin Luther King, Jr., would have been the last person to have wanted his iconization and his heroism. He was an enormously guilt-laden man. He was drenched in a sense of shame about his being featured as the preeminent leader of African-American culture and the civil rights movement.

Michael Eric Dyson

#74. Oprah Winfrey represents the most ingenious and creative expression of black spiritual genius in the public mainstream that we've had in quite a long time, if ever.

Michael Eric Dyson

#75. When Dr. King was murdered, I had no idea who he was. But as soon as I heard his words on television that night when I was 9 years old, I was dumbstruck, awestruck by their power.

Michael Eric Dyson

#76. With the evolution of social media that includes blogging, Facebook, and Twitter, who and how information is delivered has changed tremendously. The landscape for news is a different place, and people have to accept that.

Michael Eric Dyson